Motorist Claims Corporation Papers Are Carpool Passengers

We’ve heard it countless times from losers of courtroom showdowns who claim they’re going to take their defeat all the way to the Supreme Court.

But over a traffic citation?

Jonathan Frieman, a 56-year-old Northern California man, is joining the ranks of pregnant women who have transformed carpool-lane violations into a soapbox of sorts.

Jonathan Frieman. Photo: Courtesy of Jonathan Frieman

Frieman claims his $478 citation for driving solo on Highway 101’s carpool lane in October should be wiped out because, well, he wasn’t driving solo. The passenger was the articles of incorporation of his business — which were placed unbuckled on the driver’s seat, he claims.

A California Highway Patrol officer didn’t buy it and neither did a municipal traffic officer, who on Monday ordered the self-described wealthy social entrepreneur to pay the fine after a brief hearing. So just as fetuses aren’t persons or passengers under traffic law, neither are corporations.

Frieman, in a Wednesday telephone interview, notes that the Supreme Court as recently as 2010 treated corporations as people, granting them First Amendment rights to contribute freely to political campaigns. So his corporation — a non-profit charity called JoMiJo Foundation — should count as a passenger, he said.

“If it gets there to the Supreme Court, it would be great. Large-scale corporations, they don’t go to jail for the crimes that they have committed,” the 56-year-old Marin County man said. “Personhood is one of the many absurdities we’ve given these corporations that we let run wild. It’s that kind of mind-fuck we’re asking to actually address.”

Supreme Court precedent likening a corporation to a person dates back more than a century. So for years, Frieman has been driving without a breathing passenger in the carpool lane, in hopes of being pulled over and cited. Moreover, he notes, the state Vehicle Code defines a person as “natural persons and corporations.”

The carpool sign along the Marin County stretch of highway Frieman was traveling when ticketed states that carpooling amounts to “2 or more persons.”

Troy Dorn, a CHP officer, testified Monday in traffic court that, after pulling over Frieman, he told him to save his sob story for the jury, not him.

“After I explained the reason I was citing him, he explained to me that he was exempt because he was in essence a corporation,” Dorn testified, according to an account in the San Francisco Chronicle. “I explained to him I was not sure about his standing as a corporation but he could explain it later in a Marin County court.”

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